


Of Gods and Creatures of the Void

by ZenzaNightwing



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Character Study, F/M, I put canon through a garbage compactor and decided it looked nice enough, Kid Loki and Kid Thor (Marvel), Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Self-Harm, Species Dysphoria, Temporary Character Death, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 20:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenzaNightwing/pseuds/ZenzaNightwing
Summary: He turns into a snake and feels good as a coldblooded creature, with fangs and poison and no gangly limbs to trip over.He turns into a wolf and feels wrong. He is a predator, yes, but not a pack one. He can't rely on anyone but him and his friend. He has to be careful with everyone else or they'll wind up covered in his blood, staring out in mute horror.(Future. Past. Present.)Gods would eat their young like monsters of the deep. Don't let a human skin fool you.





	Of Gods and Creatures of the Void

 

 

 

When Loki is six, Frigga finds him in his room with a knife he stole from the kitchens, watching his arm intently as he slowly cuts it open.

 

She screams for the guards and rips the knife from him, runs hands cloaked in the seidr she teaches him to use over the wound, and when the guards come rushing in they find the All-Mother, dress covered in blood with a knife imbedded in the flagstone, clutching her son tightly and staring them down with glimmering, hateful eyes.

 

With his face hidden in his mother's chest, no one sees his look of utter confusion, wondering what exactly he'd done wrong.

 

Later, she will hold him and ask him why he did it, with eyes burning fever-bright and almost desperate, a smear of blood on her cheek.

 

“I didn't know that would happen,” he says, and tastes metal in his mouth when he does, “I'm sorry.”

 

 _(I wanted to see what was under there.)_ He doesn't say, but he feels like if he tried to say it his tongue would turn to lead and he would never speak again. _(I wanted to see if it was awake.)_

 

He can feel the friend under his skin though. Can feel it twisting and tugging and burning him, feels it calling at him. He wants to meet it again, but he thought it would be rude to have to keep asking it to meet him. He thought he'd open the door and meet it himself.

 

And Frigga kisses him on the head and doesn't say anything to Odin or Thor, doesn't want to give Thor any ideas or ammunition, doesn't want to give Odin any vague hints that maybe this child he brought back from the warfront will go the same way as the daughter who was raised on the battlefield.

 

He doesn't know that of course, just assumes that the next time he needs to talk with it he'll find a quiet dark place and write a cheery letter with it, that so long as no one watches him talk with his friend he'll be fine. The other don't talk about theirs. Maybe its one of those taboo things he's heard about? Like that you're not supposed to tell people what you heard in another person's mind, or steal dessert from the kitchens before you've had dinner.

 

Maybe.

 

_(I wanted to see it, mother.)_

 

_(I wanted to say hi, mother.)_

 

_(Is it wrong to have a friend, mother?)_

 

-

 

He is seven when he discovers that he can shapeshift. He doesn't tell anyone for a long while, just stays in his room and practices his forms until he can feel as feral as them walking around in his normal form.

 

(He doesn't feel right in that one, no matter what, but its one of the less grating forms.)

 

He's heard one maid talk about wolves in sheep's clothing, and thinks that maybe he's the same. That maybe he's an animal walking around like a god instead, some rabid creature with snapping, foaming jaws and claws sharp enough to carve through stone. It's certainly a nice sentiment, a funny little thought experiment he can play with, to keep this skin on and see how long it takes them to notice the animal in their midst.

 

He turns into a snake and feels good as a coldblooded creature, with fangs and poison and no gangly limbs to trip over.

 

He turns into a wolf and feels wrong. He is a predator, yes, but not a pack one. He can't rely on anyone but him and his friend. He has to be careful with everyone else or they'll wind up covered in his blood, staring out in mute horror.

 

He looses the horses from the stables then turns into one himself and runs with them down streets and out into the wild forests, until his vision swims and it seems like the rest have twice the legs, until the guards come out to take the beasts back. It's an exhausting, glorious sensation, and sometimes he can't keep himself from snapping his teeth in irritation even when he's not in his own form.

 

He becomes a girl and basks in the freedom, steals dresses from the room that no one enters, the one covered in dust at the end of a wing, and goes about the palace, about the town, and smirks with lips as red as his words to his friend that they don't even see their prince among them.

 

He sits quietly by his mother's side at the dinner table and it all feels wrong. He does not belong in this bright and cheery hall, with that suffocating, heavy, humid warmth. He's made to be burned at the stake, not slowly suffocated by smoke and escaping heat. He's made to run free and wild.

 

He feels trapped.

 

-

 

His skin feels hot and feverish under Odin's hands when he guides them by the shoulder into the depths of Asgard's vaults, speaking words that don't mean anything at the moment, because all he can hear are the voices that rise from the corners, the ghosts of guards who died for the relics and the artifacts themselves feasting off of the energy of the dead and the living with their ever-hungry, screeching mouths.

 

He tells them of the jotuns, of the monsters from the planets of ice, the bloodthirsty, brutal creatures who would stop at nothing to kill and conquer for their own selfish gains.

 

Loki hears next to none of it, staring at the ice blue carapace that must be from some primordial god, some shed skin before it grew claws and killed a galaxy for sport. It tells that to him, in the same way it remains blissfully silent, in the way his friend stirs up to the top of his skin and would have him reach for it if not for the iron grip on his shoulder.

 

He wants to reach, regardless of anything. Wants to step away from his bones and flesh and petty mortal cares and annihilate himself in that blinding, consuming blue-to-white and let it frost him whole until he can crack open like a geode and dig out whatever truths lie within him.

 

He wants to with an ache that he has never wanted to do anything with before, with a blistering, consuming focus that feels more like need than want, like water and food, like warmth and air.

 

He stares at the shell of the god for as long as he can before he has to blink, and then feels the sirens call deeper within the vault, past the twisting pillars where braziers cast high shadows, within gold and red that twines with the colors he wears when he becomes a girl, which he vows to take as his own.

 

Even closer but less potent comes the sensation of _predator_. Of a mother bilgesnipe with cubs and claws and antlers and nothing but feral need for the preservation of the young, of a face staring dispassionate and cold, masked and muzzled by a helm, holding a spear for the killing blow. Of bright metal coated in every color like it's a massacre, reaching and calling and laughing with carefree madness.

 

He wants them all, so very badly. Wants all four of them, wants the god with flame and shadow and insanity and horns, wants to press them into his skin until he consumes them/they consume him and they are one.

 

“Do the Frost Giants still live?” he asks.

 

He doesn't reach, only listens, with Odin's words running in traitorous circles around him while Thor declares that he will kill them with a crown on his head and a smile on his lips, riding the forces of Asgard out on its next Wild Hunt for the creatures of ice whose deity is gone and lost, a husk of itself, caught in the gold and crimson of a palace and its blood-sworn warriors, layered in the silver and green summer that they fear.

 

They speak of crowns, of the heavy weight, of war in little snippets of sound that seem to carry heavier meaning in this place of ancient artifacts, like they will make word into bond for the mere sin of speaking it.

 

“I'm ready, father.” he says, and tastes the familiar metallic taste of lies twist across his tongue.

 

He is not ready yet, with his friend untamed and his power unnamed, but he will be. He will get his title and what he controls, and then the throne will be ready for him. Odin will tell him of what the Norns declared, with pride in his eye and then, only then, will Loki be ready.

 

They leave the room with frantic calls that no one else seems to hear screaming through the air. _Come back,_ they seem to scream into the empty echoes their footsteps leave behind, _I/we/you cannot stand to be alone any longer._

 

He pities the guards that have to walk patrols through this prison of artifacts, with the madness slipping into their minds, until they're little more than stuttering shells with empty, fractured eyes as they scramble to put themselves down before the screams get too loud.

 

_Come see me/us/yourself._

 

_Come back, child._

 

_Isn't it beautiful?_

 

_Don't ignore it/us/me._

 

_You can't run now little one._

 

_Don't try_

 

_**You're ours now.** _

 

What an utterly glorious, poisonous sensation. To be wanted. How entirely foreign.

 

Before the door closes behind them, Loki turns, for just one last, greedy look at the fallen creatures his father has enslaved that call out with their maddened possession, and instead sees the madness that called and reached for him as well, the wild, high, laughing thing that tugs and pulls at him and drags him upright with gold clasped around his throat.

 

A glove, posed as if reaching out towards the door, like it can call back its captors with its music of battle made word, stones glittering on each knuckle.

 

But then he blinks, and its held upright like the rest of the trophies, like it's been beaten into submission and held by the scruff to be seen by all before it never sees the light of day again from this vault of ghosts and hellish want.

 

But he feels a tug, deep in his gut, and knows that it is what he wants, more than the shell of a god, falling in love with the ghost he saw, for the price he will have to pay to get it, and he does not know what it will be but he is sure that it will be glorious for the sacrifice he has to make for it.

 

The doors shut with a deep boom, and Odin's hand has grown even heavier on his shoulder to drag him away from the gilded songbirds cage.

 

It is too late for him to keep Loki away, though. He didn't teach his son to hate his kind that day, but he did teach him to want, and of the heavy hand on his shoulder that was the only thing holding him back from reaching out and taking fire and ice beneath everything he is until he is infinite within the finite space he holds.

 

And so Loki stares with eyes as hungry as beasts of the wild, and _wants_.

 

-

 

The next day, Odin takes the Tesseract from its place within his vaults and gives it to a blood-sworn guard to take on a spiritual quest. He just wants the damn thing out of his palace.

 

He still wakes up with nightmares of blue-white and ice and an endless expanse of nothing but stars and blackness.

 

He still fears the sharp-eyed one too much like his sister.

 

-

 

Thor is too loud. He's too much. He is _blinding_.

 

There is music to it, like there is to everything, a rhythmic _crack snap boom_ in uneven places, one minute muttering secrets and threats, the next announcing a new victory or concept with childish glee. His subtlety isn't nonexistent, but it is wild and changeable with the winds, a terrifying shudder between angry flashes of silver strings in his irises and the baring of fangs sharp enough to belong to creatures with forked tongues, to the calm blue sk(eyes) glittering brightly and sunlight-blinding smiles.

 

He is bright and it hurts so badly to watch him that sometimes the only thing to do is hide, to cower in the dark corners, tremble until the walls are scratched raw with frenzied concepts made in blood, emerge with rainwater tearing unseen streaks down his face.

 

It feels like Thor has stolen something from him, some thing that was silently, undeniably his and twisted and warped it to fit his hands, beat it into submission until it's his and his alone. Loki must wait on the sidelines like a good little brother until it's his turn with the wrongness and he can make it his again until Odin wrests it from his hands too early to give it back to Thor.

 

That's just how it works, after all. Thor isn't the golden boy, he's transcended gold, simply glows like water lit up with electricity, sharp and dangerous and oh so coveted, this lightning-in-a-bottle child of storm.

 

And if Thor wants to consort with beings of forked tongues, then Loki will let him. He just wants the wrongness back under his control.

 

So he stops hiding his predators, because it's been far too long and no one's noticed and he just wants to be _seen again_ , wants to be more that the murky silhouette hidden by his brother's tempest, more than the creature emerging from the fog to snatch up innocents away to his friend's den.

 

He longs to bite Thor with fangs, to cut deep with long lasting venom, incurable and slow-acting, to make him feel this painful decay kept half-frozen in the space between time and reality. He uses knives instead, the things his mother taught to use, to cut as harsh and bite as deep as words from his forked, metal-laden tongue, because although he wants to drag Thor down to his level just so he can hiss in his eyes and let him see the monster, he does not think he could ever stand to see him die.

 

They know he can shapeshift after that.

 

He doesn't much care, though.

 

It's the first time he ever saw lightning get hurt, set itself on fire and keep burning, and he wants to see more even if he has to brand it on his skin in tree branches of scarred flesh. He doesn't care when they all know its him because his eyes glow a green so tangled in dark and light that whole forests could not be contained within their depths.

 

He is claws and fangs, and he is clad in black and green and high grace.

 

He dares them to take that from him.

 

-

 

Years pass, and the Tesseract returns with its poisonous blue, carried by a creature of gold eyes, wincing and tangled in nets of frantic prophecy. It has been a long time since a true god has entered the pantheon from outside the royal family, since the Norns had deigned to scrape their hands against the calm waters of Asgard and send wayward drops spiraling away.

 

It has been far too long. Long enough that some small, hopeful part of him had thought the Norns might've died wherever they sit in the stars, the callous, horrid monsters in the void that speak in voices that would make mortal ears bleed.

 

Long enough that the occurrence of this one makes the ice cold fingers of every corpse he has ever made skating down his spine like a lover's caress, murmuring laughter and worries into his ears like sweet nothings.

 

But this gold looks at him with such fear and conflicting purpose that for a second he is alone on the battlefield with his daughter coated in blood that is not hers, shivering with the weight of an oracle bowing her shoulders, golden spear in his hands and hellish words on his tongue as the Norns name her and she looks up at him the same way she has always done and _smiles_.

 

For one second, all he can see is green and silver and running red and then this burning, consuming gold before him, searching for a purpose he didn't know he had until it became the only thing that he is.

 

“Leave me with the traveler.” He says, and his voice booms with Allspeak and Odinforce, the kind that sends them immediately scurrying for the door like so many mice.

 

“Allfather-” the young-god speaks, like it hurts to say any words at all, gold disappearing as he bows his head and screws his eyes shut in a grimace.

 

“Do not speak, do not look, do not hear. Else forces beyond our control come into this ceremony.” He learned his lesson last time. She had let out a breathless call for him before the ceremony had ended, and so the things that live in the abyss with the Norns had come through, had tainted her name and his legacy. The soldier ducks his head, screws his eyes shut, grinds his teeth and clamps his hands over his ears.

 

“I call you, spirits of gospel and death, come to me.” The air changes, like it's charged with some nebulous energy, and the shadows lengthen until there is nothing but a golden throne and crown and spear and eyes locked behind dark lids, and he hears something shattering before all sound cuts out until it's nothing but the abyss and two figures caught in it, until he can't hear his own words but can only feel the shapes his lips make and the way it vibrates through him.

 

“I call you, maidens of the endless and eternal, tell me true.” The ghosts return, hands clawing at him, at his skin, his armor, his eyepatch, his eye, his soul, scrabbling like they can find root in the gold and shadow, and suddenly there is nothing but the darkness, like he is blinded by his own blood again.

 

“I call you, goddesses of the dreams and the heart, make this man anew.” And then he cannot speak, can feel the energy growing and pressing down, until it is all that exists, like he is being judged by something cosmic and it is laughing. Until that sound is the only thing he will ever know when he is condemned to nonexistence.

 

He can feel when they arrive, when they step into the room, one after the other in the space of a second, until each blurs into the other and they are one and separate.

 

_Folly._

 

_Fool._

 

_Father._

 

_**How Quaint.** _

 

They speak like every word is the same, and yet when they speak together it sends the fingers back down his spine, gnarled and cold with death and stars.

 

_Hello, little corpse._

 

_Hello, little child._

 

_Hello, little one._

 

_**Hello, Little King.** _

 

Three in one, eternal and constant, future, past present. Crushing and weighing him down. Blood in the water, screams in the air, blade in hand.

 

Their attention turns from him and it feels like a weight is being lifted off of him, even though the sickening turning in his stomach reminds him that if he is wrong, if the young-god is not what he thought, then there will be crimson staining the gold of his palace and a body consumed by these creatures. There will be guilt on his conscience, even more than there is now.

 

_How interesting._

 

_How small._

 

_How beautiful._

 

_**How fascinating.** _

 

_Lost and alone._

 

_Searching for a home and finding none._

 

_Helpless but brave._

 

_**Adorable.** _

 

Their voices turned even more three toned and inhuman the longer they speak, like it is ripping them apart to fit within the mortal constraints of sound.

 

_Sacrifice._

 

_Willing._

 

_Asked._

 

_**Yours.** _

 

They say the last word together with such disdain, their collective attention returning to him for a single, heartstopping moment, the weight of it growing by the second, crushing and freeing, like molting and old skin by tearing the old one to shreds.

 

They give a heavy, collective, satisfied sigh and the attention doesn't leave him, just shifts that slight little bit so he can breathe again, and he realizes now that it's not that he's still a focus of theirs, but it's that they're expanding out into the world with it, the sky being held up by the guard while it expands outward to press down on everyone else.

 

_**You Asked.** _

 

_God of Royalty._

 

_God of Madness._

 

_Odin._

 

_**We Answer Now.** _

 

Blood in the water.

 

Screams in the air.

 

Blade against his throat.

 

_God of Truths._

 

_God of Gateways._

 

_Heimdall._

 

_**Yours Eternal.** _

 

And then, they are gone, and with them they take the crushing weight, the darkness, the blindness, the plugs in his ears that prevented him from hearing anything but their voices, and his muteness.

 

His sight clears, and Heimdall still kneels, eyes screwed shut, hands clasped firmly over his ears, jaw clenched shut. It's frightening, watching the way the true title comes over him, the realization he does not know to name yet that straightens his spine, that makes the golden armbands he wears glint just a little more.

 

He clears his throat and slams Gungnir on the ground until the sensation travels through the stone and alights against Heimdall, who rises automatically, opens his eyes, glowing gold (just as he wanted) and lowers his hands.

 

“You are Heimdall, god of gateways and truths, god of my pantheon.”

 

His eyes are distant and focused simultaneously, staring at and in front of and through him all at once, and he feels the inherent instinct deep within him that screams that this is a predator, that it will eat him whole.

 

Heimdall kneels.

 

“I live to serve, my King.”

 

A few moments to breathe in relief that this monster is shackled and collared and chained to his will, another pet to unleash on the realms until they bow when the time comes and his twin creatures of sons will remain by his side no matter what.

 

“Take the Tesseract to Midgard. Let no selfish creature have it.”

 

No door will remain locked to Heimdall, no secret will be unknowable, but he will not do anything that Odin wouldn't have approved of, he will not be the unnatural darkness of his daughter, will not remain untamed, with death and conquest running sharp and heady through his blood.

 

Gold is the gods' color, after all. Gold means loyalty and the comforts of his court. Gold means _his._

 

(He fears when the Norns will come for his sons.

 

He fears they will not wear gold.)

 

-

 

Hela screams. She screams and claws and shatters everything she has against her prison of bone, until there is nothing left but tears and traitorous thoughts, until she has nothing but her bitterness and spite.

 

She has blood on her chin. She can't remember if it's hers or if she ripped someone's throat out.

 

She doesn't even know if it matters.

 

She's _sorry_.

 

Can't Father understand that? She understood that when Mother's blue skin warmed and her glass eyes stared up at the ceiling with a golden spear imbedded in her chest, hand reaching out like in a plea or an attack, like mercy and mercilessness joined together in unholy union.

 

She understood when he held her and whispered _I'm sorry_ into raven black hair until the word spoken lost all meaning.

 

She understood it when she couldn't go out in the sunlight for long before her skin felt wrong and crawled with the need to spread black ice turned steel and her kidnappers tried to say it before they went to Hel.

 

Sure, she wouldn't understand when she left behind piles of bodies with black metal spiking through them, tangling her hands in the fur of a predator as lonely and seeking and hungry as her, and someone would say _I'm sorry your father is raising such a monster._ She wouldn't get the chance to ask them why they said it before they became roses, though, all thorn-filled and bloody red.

 

What did she do wrong that time? All she did was want _more_ , of the stars and of the ground, of the air itself, just like he taught her. All she did was crave supplicants, to give her offerings of blood and meat, of land and gold and men and women, just like he always showed her.

 

All she did was obey his rules. His rules were beautiful things. They're much more unchanging than the man that made them.

 

He said he wanted peace, right? Was it that? But how could he, what use would she be with peace? She'd done everything he asked before then, followed all of his rules, killed everything he told her to, decimated realm after realm until they all feared the name of Asgard like he asked her to. Why would he punish her with peace now?

 

Maybe it was because of the fire. Because she fell in love with the endless thing in Father's prison of truths, because deep inside, she wanted to stay by its side more that she wanted to stand next to Father on the battlefield. She just had to ignore the flames until they consumed her.

 

(She took a piece of it once, and it burned her beautifully, mottled her hand and then burned her alive until she woke up again with it churning merrily in its brazier, unmarked and unburned. Don't tell, though. It's a secret.

 

She thinks it might be her god.)

 

He sent the women with wings after her when she decided that this ruse of wanted peace was a test, to see if her loyalties truly lay with him. She promised him that everything she had, everything she would ever be was his, even though the three ladies with voices like midnight stars said she wasn't and the fire made it true. Why wouldn't he believe her, though? The fire didn't want anything from her but her patronage and for her to feed it bodies of the dead. It wanted little more than he did, so she could share, couldn't she?

 

The Valkyries descended from above, the ones in white that she taught how to kill, and she feels a storm of grief fill her then. Was this another lesson she had to learn from him? Did she have to kill the closest thing she'll have to children to prove to him that she's his?

 

She did. She left one alive though, just the one. She couldn't bear to kill all of her legacy.

 

She did and it broke something in her she didn't know was unbroken.

 

And then-

 

Then there were stars filtering past her into streams of light and darkness. There were words echoing in her ears that couldn't be right _nonono she was faithful she'ssorrysorryshedidn'tmeanit_.

 

Betrayal stings, even more than the thousand broken bones she gave herself, throwing herself against a wall and screaming to be saved.

 

She can feel death through this prison though. She can feel souls slipping through gaps, falling through her fingertips even as she plays with them, drawing patterns and strings through. Souls have a funny texture, she finds. Not like water and not like gel. Moldable to her whims, though. She doesn't like looking through them, though.

 

Others lead confusing lives, she finds. There's so much time out of the battlefield, and some of them never even see one. Shouldn't that grate at them? Shouldn't that make them want to scream and throw themselves at walls until they break themselves or it, one or the other?

 

Father called her the goddess of death and conquest, when she was little. Maybe that has something to do with it? She has her worshippers sometimes and they disgust and entrance her in equal turns, because they do not worship her on the battlefield but on the homefront. All she has are her worshippers to look through and learn from, with their blood and fire and ringing steel and pounding guns and words shouted in harsh languages.

 

In ad infinitum.

 

This is what madness must feel like.

 

-

 

Thor's naming is sharp with the taste of ozone, heavy and pressing, as he bows his head and closes his eyes and puts his hands over his ears.

 

 _Come to me, tell me true, make him anew_. He prays, like he did to the golden-eyed truth seeker that still worships him with the wary tiredness of an old man who has seen their god before and found them lacking.

 

Thor did not look, did not listen, did not say while the summoning took place and for that, Odin is eternally grateful. His golden child will not have the darkness that lives with the ladies of the infinite skies take root beneath his skin.

 

_Folly._

 

_Fool._

 

_Father._

 

_**Passing On The Crown.** _

 

_You are dead._

 

_You are unnecessary._

 

_You are unimportant._

 

_**The S(o/u)n Will Take Your Eye.** _

 

They sound excited, their voices already devolving into inhuman tones and hissed ancient words from languages that never existed in the first place. Their influence already feels suffocating, rushing over him in stomach churning waves, and they turn from him to cackle when they catch sight of the one they must name.

 

_How mighty._

 

_How vibrant._

 

_How pure._

 

_**How Funny.** _

 

_Sunlight within the void, screaming forever._

 

_Bitter skies in forever purgatory._

 

_A true son of madness and brother of í̷̩̦̮̫͎̤͉̰͖̝̦̞͈̈́́́̔̌̎͑̿̀̋͘͝͝ͅͅņ̵̛̛̳̱̳̪̤̮̞̹̹̦͕̳͐̄̈́͌͒̂͗̃̍͜f̴̢̨̨͉͈̤̺̰̿̈́̿̉̆͆̎̒̈̂̾̃̅̕͜i̴̗̲̗͔͇̙̰̲͍̤̋̊̀̀̍͌͊͌͝͠ň̶̖̝͕̹̲̩̘̤̯̜̻̹̦̳̤̅̋͛̽͒̕î̵̛̪̞̖̹̭͙̫̭̭̮̐͊͋̏͂͑͒̈͜͜͠t̷̨̩̘̬̝̥͜y̶̛̛̠̳̗̥̩͖̱̥͓̅͒̓̂ͅ._

 

_**Truly thrilling.** _

 

The last word spoken by Verdandi is garbled beyond recognition, like a hissing beast had struggled up from within her throat and screamed mid-word, a spine-chilling sound that would've killed any mortal who heard it. Is the geas he put over the mention of Hela so binding that not even the Norns can speak of her?

 

_Allfather._

 

_Bright._

 

_Eternal._

 

There's a wash of pride at those descriptors, a deep satisfaction that his son will be as benevolent a ruler as he, will follow in his footste-

 

_**His Brother's Keeper.** _

 

And that- that is said with more relish than anything they've ever said before, so free of scorn and full of wondering amusement, to say that he does not belong to Odin's pantheon, to say whatever in the nine realms and two hells that means.

 

_**You Asked.** _

 

_God of Royalty._

 

_God of Madness._

 

_Fool of the Gods' Comedy._

 

_**We Answer Now.** _

 

_God of Warriors._

 

_God of the Skies._

 

_Thor Odinson._

 

_**His Own.** _

 

They leave in a haze of blistering laughter, returning everything back to normal like things aren't slowly falling apart for him. Like he isn't looking down at his son and watching his dreams crumble to dust, like the gold in his hair isn't refusing to shine in his colors, like the silver and gray of stormy skies aren't glowing faintly with divinity.

 

_No no no NoNONONONONO-_

 

He can fix this. He can- he can make this right. He swears it, he will.

 

He is the god of royalty and madness. He has witnessed empires fall in times before he was born, has felt the minds of despots and crushed them with nothing but a thread of will.

 

He slams Gungir onto the floor with enough force for it to crack beneath the blow, brings Thor's head up with the suddenness of a bolt of lightning, the sound echoing through the throne room like-

 

Oh.

 

That would work.

 

(He's sorry, he thinks. He will have to lie thrice for the twice-named titles, tell three falsehoods and no more, for each Norn he wrongs.)

 

“You are Thor Odinson,” He says, and makes his choice, “God of lightning, god of thunder, god of my pantheon.”

 

A thrice guarded, thrice-damned secret he can already feel pressing on his shoulders.

 

Thor smiles like sunshine for that, like the clouds breaking open to reveal it and shine its warmth upon the guilty and the innocent alike and bows.

 

Odin feels nauseous.

 

His true-son wears silver and gray and storm clouds and a moniker of lies from the mad king. He is not golden and true-named, not perfect and it hurts somewhere deep inside, churns with realization and cold hurt.

 

( _ **His Brother's Keeper.**_ )

 

He does not think his stolen child will wear his golden ghosts.

 

He thinks his reign is coming to an end.

 

-

 

Heimdall lives in a state of perpetual, guilty agony. They say that truth hurts, and so too does being the protector and embodiment of it. Even more so does it hurt to be tied by bond of oath and spilt blood and the Norn's promise of him, like some kind of blood bride. Like Frigga, who sits before him now, with a loom working under her nimble fingers.

 

She hums when she works, nonsense songs from her youth before Odin's pet and her wolf had ravaged her homeland. He can see all of her past lain out before him, the tuneless renditions she'd done when she was truly little, the even more harmonious versions as princess of Vanaheim, locked in a food storage shed with the rest of the royal family and their servants, frantically spinning seidr with her hands and her voice, giving words to the music that blessed protection and invisibility to her family.

 

He can see her on the battlefield, fighting to keep her people alive, standing against an army with fire in her eyes and knives in hand, then standing against a girl in black and green and black steel ice sprouting from her fingertips, a knife to the heart, the Norn's voices speaking to her with no barrier between her and them, naming her of the pantheon of flame, waking up with her sharp fingernails trailing over her features and death-pale lips kissing her cheek with the graceless happiness of a small child and the breathless little cry of 'sister-god'.

 

He can see her, covered in ash and half-feral, ready to protect the last of her remaining family, meeting the Mad King of Asgard on the battlefield, him kissing her blood spattered hand and giving her an offer she could never refuse.

 

She died once and woke up a goddess, kissed by death, and through her ears he can hear the Norn's laughter when they named her echoing in her ears as she lies on her marriage bed, feeling used and dirtied and violated. Marriage and War, indeed. They both suit her nicely, like the wedding dress she had commissioned that was half plated armor and half deadly beauty.

 

She had only seen Odin's daughter a handful of times aside from the first time with a knife through the heart, like a grim portent of what might yet come, seen her empty and cold as a corpse sitting at a dinner table, looking at the cutlery as if perusing an armory, eating messily and without grace. A half-feral beast child she cannot tell anyone about unless her tongue freeze the name on her lips.

 

Frigga always wondered what happened to the child's mother.

 

(Her name was Angrboda, and she was cold and cruel but kind to her own and Odin killed her for he could not have that weakness masquerading behind the monster. He had bought her with war and broken ice to be as heartless as he, and he could not have any of her love corrupting the weapon he was forging that made ice blacker than any other Frost Giants, which turned to steel as she grew ever colder and older.)

 

There is a poet on Midgard that is making a play very similar to the grand tragedy of Hela, although there is a worse but happier ending to it. He added a t and an m and rearranged a few of the letters but its close enough.

 

“You are staring, Heimdall.” Frigga says, breaking him out of the paths he follows and tracks with his eyes. He is brought out of it before the familiar glow of the divinity giving artifact that gave him this godhood and the space-folding gaze he has now bleeds through like it always does whenever his mind strays to Midgard.

 

“Apologies, my lady. Merely lost in thought.” Not quite a lie, not quite a truth. It almost feels like plagiarism, to use those, not entirely natural on his tongue, crawling sinful down his spine.

 

“Hmm.” She hums, eyes looking carefully over her strings as she grabs a shuttle of dark blue thread. She has a talent for that. Both of the things, actually, both weaving and making single syllable sounds that convey entire lectures in them, left for the imagination to conjure scorn and praise and questions and agreements.

 

Standing guard over the Bifrost is a pointless exercise. It's highly doubtful the few Asgardians out of the realm would need to come back from their tasks of guarding the various separate vaults scattered throughout the realms as tokens of Asgardian conquest, and the royal family does not require its services for the day. He must stay, however, because he is of his King's accursed pantheon and a soldier of his lands, the oaths of both binding him to follow his orders until the day he dies.

 

It's always lonely here, on this side of the Rainbow Bridge, in the elaborate metalwork of the Bifrost lens. He could probably draw every detail of it with his senses taken from him if he had to, just from the memory of every moment spent here, staring at the walls.

 

“How goes the war of succession in Muspelheim?” Frigga asks, the corner of her lips curling up knowingly.

 

“As well as it could, my queen. You knew that much already, my lady.” She does that frequently, plays dumb to see if someone can pick up on it, asks questions about wars and marriage alliances when she knows more of the details than anyone else. It's certainly entertaining to watch them lecture her like she's some dumb, ditzy princess that got the Allfather of Asgard to marry her because she looked pretty, and then spill all of their affairs out at the feast table in a voice loud enough to reach their spouse.

 

“Surtr will have the throne, I believe. He takes after his mother much more than his brother did.” She selects a shuttle with silver thread on it next, runs her fingers over the softness and then passes it through gracefully, “Besides, he's the one who killed the Queen in the first place, I think the Fates will take it upon themselves to make sure right of conquest is held up.”

 

“You are as wise as you are beautiful.” It's natural to compliment her, she draws them like moths to a flame, like beasts to blood. She is magnetic to all men, really, in the same way they are drawn to conflict and bloodshed, in a way that makes them exalt upon her virtues like they're saying wedding vows.

 

She smiles, full and bright, with sharp canines glinting in the golden light of braziers, fire flickering and dangerous. “I should hope so. Ruling Asgard is hard enough when you don't have snide comments about your looks.”

 

Yes, Odin was lucky fool to have married her. She is quite close to being the sole monarch of Asgard from the shadows, using his reputation for indiscriminate bloodshed as a weapon against her foes, a casual tool for torture as she bleeds them dry.

 

She gives him a dangerous look, happy and bright, but not the gold he is bound to, not anything she herself has promised herself to, more ivory and silver, snake's fangs and pearly venom. She is winter sunshine, he is coming to realize. A hopeful, bright light cutting through clouds and making ice crystals glimmer on the ground, the kind that makes you underdress to feel the light against your skin and instead feel nothing but bitter cold wind chilling you to the bone.

 

She is the winter sun and she knows it as she stares him down with half-lidded eyes, with the half-challenge, the most intimate thing either of them could ever truly do except speak, to look the other in the eye and think traitor's thoughts.

 

Her smile fades slowly, like a wilting flower, something beautiful you wanted to stare at and be with into something sad and dead looking. She stands with grace, an ancient beast unfurling itself and steps forward, stands above him upon the steps of the dais and stares out into the void beyond where the Bifrost Bridge extends, waiting to be summoned and used by the golden-eyed key.

 

She looks wistful and contemplative, staring out at the stars with eyes that say nothing and speak less, and he finds that this is a truth he is content to let remain unknown, what she thinks now looking at the void.

 

(She thinks of three voices, laughing, chanting, unknowable and deep, and the dark thing they called evil that seeped in between the cracks of her own words and the bits of sound rattling in her head and their very forms, hunched and graceful and small.

 

She misses the clarity of the abyss.)

 

Her hands raise, her silver and copper seidr flickering to life between her fingers, falling around in gossamer threads as she weaves the magic she stole from the Norns themselves, turning blue-gray eyes to flint and hoarfrost as she slams her wards over Odin's, suffocates them for as long as she can and looks at him again, nose to nose, those traitor's thoughts finally able to be expressed while the world is blocked out for the precious few minutes she needs.

 

“Tell me true, Guardian of the Gates, what did the Three Sisters name Thor?”

 

A lucky fool, indeed.

 

-

 

For the third time, the golden void shines, heavy and dark and pressing, ripping words from his tongue and using them as bond. He would plead for his adopted son if he could, if the ritual would allow supplication within its words, but there is nothing but cold demands, nothing but the pleading edge every pronunciation.

 

_Come. Tell. Make._

 

( _Please don't take this one like I took him._ )

 

There isn't any warning, just the cold fingers of the dead clamping themselves over his mouth and nose, pressing down on his shoulders, trying to push him from the throne, to make him kneel, to push him under water and drown a god, to make him meet the goddess of the underworld and suffer the consequences.

 

Their presence is already suffocating, already drowning, and it grows every second at a frenzied rate, like it will kill them not to, to expand and consume and eat alive until they have found something to sate them for eternity.

 

_Folly._

 

_Fool._

 

_Father._

 

_**The Dead Will Eat You Whole.** _

 

_The King-maker._

 

_The Life-taker._

 

_The Betrayer._

 

_**May You Die With No Weapon In Hand.** _

 

And then-

 

Then there is a silence from them, none of their frenzied mental echoes. A lack. Like the air has been summoned out of the room leaving only the weight of their presence and nothing else, just corpses in an empty room, devoid of everything but taste and touch.

 

Perfect silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_**O̷R̶U̶S̴ ̷U̵S̷O̶R̸ ̵U̴O̷R̸S̴ ̵O̷F̸E̵V̸R̵E̶R̷ ̸T̶E̴E̴R̸N̷A̴L̶ ̶I̵M̴N̷E̶ ̶M̶N̸I̸E̵ ̵E̶I̵M̷N̵ ̵I̵N̶D̶M̸ ̶A̷N̵D̶ ̶R̸A̵E̷L̸Y̵I̵T̶ ̵N̷D̵A̶ ̴A̷S̶E̸P̷C̴ ̸L̴L̴A̸ ̶O̷F̴ ̴H̴E̸T̸M̵ ̶I̸I̸N̶F̶I̸T̸N̶E̶ ̵A̴N̷D̷ ̶I̶M̵E̷N̶ ̷O̷V̵R̶F̶E̸E̴R̸ ̴E̶T̸E̵R̸A̴L̵N̸ ̶I̵F̷I̸T̷N̶N̴I̶E̸** _

 

They scream it. It lives beyond sound and air and everything else, make it echo and run and seep into the ground beneath his feet, it should kill him, he thinks, but it doesn't, because he is getting only a mere shade of the true sound, focused surely and entirely on the subject of the naming.

 

It is a feral, primal sound, the kind that makes every hair stand up and all thought obliterated in a single second, replaced with nothing but white hot fear that blocks out everything but itself, every synapse firing for the singular, consuming purpose to _run_ , because this is not fight or flight, this is death or flee. This is a certainty of the end.

 

_How broken._

 

_How bitter._

 

_How bloodstained._

 

_**How Viciously Perfect.** _

 

_The god with flame and shadow and insanity and horns._

 

_Silvertongued and summer-eyed._

 

_Ice and fire and chaos given human form._

 

_**The Tempest-maker Storm-seeker.** _

 

He waits with stomach churning and blood dripping from both ears, for them to speak as one and name him, but they pause and he gets the sudden gut certainty that they are trailing their fingers over his features, an old crone with shaking hands as if to make sure he is there, a young child feeling over them as if to commit them to memory, a woman tracing words she cannot speak.

 

He can feel the clench in his gut now, the stone of heavy certainty that none of this is going as planned. None of it from the beginning.

 

_Mine._

 

_Mine_

 

_Mine._

 

_**Mine.** _

 

A punch to the stomach, a blade to the heart, a murder witnessed. Everything dies before him as he watches it blindly. All of it at once, everything falling into the abyss, him staring helplessly at it all and the void staring cruelly back.

 

A claim in triplicate and sealed twice over.

 

_**You Asked.** _

 

(And he wishes he didn't.)

 

_God of Royalty._

 

_God of Madness._

 

_The Conqueror of Dust._

 

_**Now We Answer.** _

 

(He wishes they wouldn't.)

 

_God of Chaos._

 

_God of Fire._

 

_Loki (Laufey/Odin/Frigg)son._

 

_**The Storm's.** _

 

They are gone, and he almost wishes they weren't. That they stayed around long enough to let the dead suffocate him and steal the life from his form. They are gone and his senses are back and Loki's hands cover his ears but his eyes stare directly into his, summer green and horrifying.

 

The gold accents he wore remain faded, but the silver knife on his belt glows with the deep fire of divinity. Glows the same as Thor's

 

Twice over he must lie to his sons, one of them a lie himself. Twice he must fake the most ancient and sacred rituals, must desecrate it for the sake of his people, must put his brood in their illusory leashes and hope they don't try to test their chains.

 

He must be careful not to make more lies than he can hold, no more than one for each sister lest the two feel the more slighted by the third not being.

 

“You are Loki.”

 

(Not Odinson, not Laufeyson, not Friggson. He cannot lie on this, he can only keep from having it be a lie by never saying it in the first place.)

 

“God of mischief, god of lies, god of my pantheon.”

 

( _You sit upon a throne of lies_ , a part of him that he hates declares.)

 

Loki doesn't bow before he leaves, bu he does smile, a hesitant thing as if asking for permission to feel proud, and it flickers as Odin remains stone faced and screaming deep inside.

 

He saw the darkness with the Norns, most likely spoke to it too, but he didn't hear them. He will not know all of the lies Odin tells. Only Heimdall ever will, and Heimdall will never tell his truths so long as his bond to Odin remains strong and untampered.

 

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

 

But evil has come and taken the raven-haired children to belong to the forces of nature rather than he.

 

( _You sit upon a throne of lies._ )

 

( _ **Mine.**_ )

 

Someday they will inherit a throne. They are both made for them, for ice and gold, and he will mold them until there is nothing else left for them but those. They are silver after all, they can be made better, can be made perfect like craftsmen. His are gold. They mold to his whims with laughable ease.

 

He will make Thor like his sister, but golden and bright this time. Will give him the weapon that Hela stopped needing to use once she became death-pale and crimson-eyed and black-metal ice came to her call.

 

He will keep Loki like an artifact in his vaults, until he can find a better use. Will let Frigga teach him the women's arts to keep him occupied until he can get a proper plan.

 

Yes, his children are silver. They just need to be twisted and polished.

 

(His children are steel. Are ingots in Nidavellir's forges.

 

He does not know that.)

 

The King will die, yes, but then-

 

Long live the King.

 

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment and feed this poor writer.
> 
> I know, another story in less than a week? Must be an impostor. I have way too many WIPs.


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